An Cosantóir

26 | GALLIPOLI: IRISH LANDSCAPES IN A DISTANT WAR and one month prior to the annual ANZAC Day (Australian-New Zealand Army Corps) commemorations, I toured the battlefields and cemeteries of the Gallipoli Peninsula and its famous nine month conflict. The peninsula, which incorporates many legendary sites in the historiography and national identi- ties of Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and Turkey, is still a landscape virtually untouched by modernity, though it is still a landscape of the conflict that ravaged it and this is no more evident than in its place names. ANZAC Cove, the Spinks, Lone Pine Me- morial, the Nek, Walker's Ridge, Plugges Plateau and Chunuk Bair are only some of those place names that have always had a special place in my imagination since I was a boy, but also and much more instinctively Suvla Bay, where the Irish poet Francis Ledwidge fought and was wounded under the banner of the 10th (Irish) Division and 'V' Beach Cape Helles, where Irish soldiers came ashore as part of the regular British 29th Divi- A lmost 96 years to the day of the anniversary of the initial amphibious landings of 1915 BY AIRMAN MICHAEL J. WHELAN MA (AIR CORPS) "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives...you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the John- nies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours... You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well" Mustafa Kemel Ataturk, 1934 (Memorial at Ariburnu Cemetary) sion on the morning of 25 April 1915 into well defended Turkish positions and suffering very heavy casualties in the process. The objectives during the planning of the Gallipoli operations included the capture of the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (now modern Istanbul), securing sea supply routes through the Dardanelle Straits, the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea to and from Russia. The occupation thereby breaking the deadlock on the Western Front and hopefully forcing Greece and other Balkan area territorial states to join the war on the Allied side, but the opera- tion was a failure. Those battles fought and the place names that resonate in the consciousness of the peoples of Australia and New Zealand ever since have helped forge distinct national identities in those countries through commemoration and remembrance of those events and the trials and losses incurred by their soldiers, even though they were part of the invad- ing Allied armies in a conflict which saw them shipped to Turkey during the First World War. Indeed many other Green Hill Cemetery Canackle Diorama 'V' Beach Model of 'V' Beach An Cosantóir November 2011

• Cover